Spring is mud and the wind is just colder
than the sun looked from inside the house
and I need to give you those cables back,
thanks for the jump, you remember,
how they call it a winter storm event
(jeezus they give them names now
because it’s just mud and weird
until these one-hit-wonder blizzards whip
the trees down) and anyway I’ll be there in a bit
because we don’t live together obviously
obviously, my arms burn when I remember it.
It’s not just all sparrows and mice,
there’s a cardinal as red as heat on the gate,
glowing, which is why I haven’t left yet.
What happened? How our time opened up wide,
it spilled out, spread out. And these buds,
we would have said they were early once,
the effect still kisses something deep green
like sun. Will you marry me?
I’m firing loose, my hands are unsteady.
What it feels like, when winter cracks.
-MK Sturdevant
My writing has appeared in Orion, Flyway, Alluvian, Newfound, Kestrel, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in the Lily Poetry Review. I was listed in the Top 25 Emerging Writers with Glimmer Train Press twice in 2017, and was a finalist for the Montana Prize in Fiction 2019. I live and work in the Chicago area.